There are many tools available to help IT professionals and aspiring IT professionals prepare for their next — or first — certification exam. Training and exam preparation materials include everything from online courses or live labs to thoroughly researched guidebooks or video walkthroughs.

Of course, it's far from unprecedented among certified IT professionals to take and pass a certification exam without so much as cracking the cover of a study guide, downloading a single schematic or execise, or sitting through even 60 seconds' worth of study group drills. Many experienced professionals have learned everything they need to know to sail through a given exam just by working in the industry.

Among certified information security professionals who participated in our recent Cybersecurity Certification Survey, 38.5 percent did not use any training materials or study aids created by the certification provider to prepare for their most recent certification exam.

In a similar vein, roughly 54 percent of survey respondents did not use any training materials or study aids created by a third-party training provider to prepare for their most recent certification exam. So one key takeaway relating to the various kinds of certification study and training materials out there is that a lot of people in the industry don't use them.

Some individuals, on the other hand, probably especially including those who are relatively new to information security, do indeed rely on certification training materials and study aids to help them prepare for certification exams. For those who do use books, videos, training courses, and so forth, we asked them where they tend to get their training from.

Among certified information security professionals who prepared for their most recent security certification exam using certification training materials created by the certification provider, the 10 most popular sources of training are as follows:

1) (ISC)2
2) ISACA
3) CompTIA
4) SANS/GIAC
5) EC-Council
6) TestOut
7) Microsoft
8) Fortinet
9) Cisco
10) IBM

Also Mentioned: FAIR Institute, Mile2, Okta, The Open Group

Among certified information security professionals who prepared for their most recent security certification exam using certification training materials created by a third-party training company, the 10 most popular sources of training are as follows:

1) Wiley
2) Pearson
3) Udemy
4) Cybrary
5) O'Reilly
6) LinkedIn Learning
7) McGraw Hill
8) BE INFOSEC
9) Dion Training
10) Boson

Also Mentioned: CED Solutions, CertMike, A Cloud Guru, GMetrix, ITProTV (ACI Learning), MeasureUp, Pocket Prep, ThorTeachers, Training Camp, uCertify

If there's a cybersecurity certification in your future, and you'd like to have the benefit of some additional training, but haven't been certain where to turn — well, now you have some options.

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